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February 2010

I have the same sense. Everyone is trying to position their social media crowd as THE one. The fact is, everyone might have a different sense of how to use/implement social media and what the major issues are. As danah boyd points out many times but particularly in Do you See What I See?: Visibility of Practices through Social Media, we all bring our own filters.

I'm not a social media stragist so much as a marketer who uses social media as a tool. And as a human being, my concern for over a decade has been how financial market "infomation" is decoupled from what human beings value on a personal level. Because of that, social media's strategic relevance becomes, for me, most significant in how it creates and modifies community interactions and health. But more relevant today is the sense of fragmentation amidst the explosive growth in this new industry that requires merging financial and social goals.

However I think there's another component that has made the solution far more obvious to so many people: I'm going to say that this is a longterm positive effect of previous diversity struggles. I believe that the longterm effect of breaking gender stereotypes so that women join the workforce and dads bond deeply with children, and mixing socioeconomic, religious, country-of-origin and other cultures has been to become deeply aware of the impact business practices have on communities, personal health, and children's opportunities.

The traditional economic and financial concepts of capitalism vs. society (or market-driven vs. tax-and-spend) are being replaced by the plausibility of "business-community mashups," where everyone works together to improve the world. It's fascinating to watch, but more importantly it's an important time for the participants to understand their role in the overall portfolio, to recognize that for the world economic models to incorporate sophisticated information that information must be gathered and shared, and to function as a growth industry rather than individual rebel alliances fighting against an entrenched power system.

Because that power system broke, full stop. It's here for us to rebuild, and we'd best do it fast and thoroughly, modeling those very values we treasure: collaboration and transparency.